Iraqis Take Democracy Lessons From House Republicans

Shite and Kurdish leaders of the Iraq National Assembly were stung this week by criticism that a last minute rule change regarding approval of the proposed constitution was unfair.  The change would have made it far more difficult for the minority Sunnis to defeat the constitution by securing a 2/3rds majority against the document in three provinces.   

Problem was, the Iraqis thought that following the practices of House Republicans would be consistent with principles of democracy. 

For years, Republicans have been bending, rewriting, or simply ignoring any rule that got in their way of achieving political victory at all cost.   The list is lengthy: 

•  Keeping a vote open for hours while bribing House Republicans to change their vote on the bloated, private-sector Medicare prescription drug benefit;
• Disregarding the rules preventing a bill from being considered until members have a chance to read it (which led to enactment of a provision last year giving House staffers the right to see American citizens' tax returns);
• Rewriting the ethics rules to allow an indicted member to continue serving in the leadership; to enable ethics investigations to be blocked on a partisan basis; and to prohibit punishments based on an appearance of a conflict of interest.

The Iraqis had the good sense to reverse their corrupted rule change before too much damage was done to their fledgling democracy.   House Republicans, however, keep trampling on our democracy every day.